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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

A link to an official website would be nice, anywhere but "I heard somewhere". I'd be interested to hear as it's often said of the US and I've even seen it said of the UK and that simply isn't true.

Well, it's actually OT, and I promise that I have no intent to hijack this thread, but as you insist: I did some research, and found, that my statement was inaccurate and incomplete. What I found out (for Germany) is, that it is not allowed to send cash as a normal letter. See AGB der Deutschen Post AG § 2 (2) 7. Now, this is not a law, anymore, since the German post is now a private business, although the government is still the largest share holder, to my knowledge. In fact, it's also not allowed to send cheques as normal letters, if they can be cashed in by anyone.

BUT, you can select other forms than standard letters for your transmission. Sending money as a package, is no problem, it seems.

These are now contractual conditions, but they used to be part of the post law, which I had in mind when I made my original statement.

I wouldn't call Caitlyn Martin uninformed. But basically what she said is that they will change the base of their newly planned distro (which they want to make a business with) from Slackware to something that has "major backing and support", because Slackware's future is uncertain now.
That is the new spirit of open source: Earn money with refining the work of others, but when there are problems with the base you build on then the base will be exchanged instead of contributing back.

No the place or time to discuss the good or bad on banks, creditcards or paypal.

I just made my $20 donation through PayPal.

*PS: You all might remember me from a while back where I was enthausiastic about getting a group-buy from the store, but that bleeded to death since postage was more than doubling the donation - So instead of getting physcal goodies in return: Just donate and enjoy the presence of Slackware on your harddrive and computerscreen*

To clarify, our "newly planned distro" has been around for four years, so nothing new here. It's been a private, customized Salix OS build with our own packages added for a long time. There are three use cases which are a royal pain to get right from a vanilla Slackware build or from a Salix OS CD install, for that matter, so we created something to deal with those cases. Recently we built directly from Slackware instead of Salix OS as we do some things (including automated dependency handling) differently from the way Salix OS does.

Now, four years on, we wanted to give back to the Linux community. There are five of us in total and two have done what custom code we have. I am one of the two. Our idea to give back was to create a niche distro so that others could use what we built on a Slackware derivative, hence the plans for a public release alpha at the end of this month. From what I've seen the core Slackware community doesn't like derivatives much.

Here's the rub: our use cases were done for consulting clients originally. They need to be well supported. Could we continue on if something happened to Slackware and Salix OS, effectively creating a fork? Yes, the five of us could pull that off. The big question is whether or not that really is the way to go considering we've had no public releases to date.

My point on DistroWatch was that I was opposed to basing off Slackware from the start because it is a small community project built by a small team with little financial backing. That's not a criticism. It is not a reflection on the quality of the code or the work done by the developers, which I still consider, from a purely technical standpoint, an excellent base to build from.

As far as giving back to Slackware: trust me that you don't want what we have. It doesn't match Slackware philosophy at all. It's big on GUI tools and automated dependency checking and all the stuff you guys seem to hate. I don't see how we could contribute anything upstream that would be welcome.

Let me be clear: I know some of you hate me because I've dared write reviews that didn't praise Slackware from top to bottom. I honestly have a love-hate relationship with the distribution myself. I love the reliability, performance and stability. I think it's a solid base to build on. That has always been clear in my writing.

I don't know of any other distro where creating a custom build for business would be criticized but the Slackware community is, um... special. I dare say that what we've built is something most of you would never consider using. Why should anyone here get bent out of shape if we do a Debian based build instead of a Slackware based build? How does it impact Slackware? Do you guys care if Salix OS or VectorLinux or Zenwalk or Porteus continue? If not, why care about Yarok? Pardon me, but I don't get it.